50 Pfennig

Hamm's 1920 Notgeld issue belongs to the second wave of German municipal emergency currency, when the post-war coin shortage had become genuinely critical and central government supply couldn't keep pace with demand. The Magistrat, like hundreds of other municipal bodies, simply filled the gap themselves. Most of these local issues circulated intensively within tight geographic boundaries — shopkeepers in neighboring towns often refused them outright.

Westphalian Notgeld of this period was typically printed by local job shops rather than specialist security printers, which shows in the variable registration quality across the series.